


Isobel's Story

by Silex



Category: Kemp Owyne (Traditional Song)
Genre: Based on a song, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Jukebox Fanworks Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 22:56:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14725175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: A retelling of a traditional ballad.





	Isobel's Story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Morbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/gifts).



> Like most fairy tales the song leaves you with a lot of questions. Based on the request I tried to answer some of them. I hope you enjoy.

Isobel swam slowly through the wreckage of the sunken ship, trying to distract herself while she waited for Kemp Owen to arrive, if he showed up at all. The number of sunken ships around the island where she was trapped, if it couldn’t even be called an island, was disheartening to say the least, but they certainly were interesting to explore.

She could smell magic and treasure in some of them, which was probably the most fascinating part of being cursed. Isobel was a sea serpent in both body and to some degree mind, with everything that came with it.

Swiping away the rotting timbers of a ship’s hull where the scent was strongest she found a collection of gold coins, untarnished by time and water, as well as a sword. The leather that had once wrapped the grip had long since rotted away, but the blade itself was protected by the magic that had been worked into it when it had been forged.

As a serpent, she wanted those coins simply for the sake of having them, but she wanted the sword for a different reason.

She had often joked with Owen that he needed a sword for she had never seen him carrying one. It would be a gift for him when he arrived, a safe way to make sure he knew who she was and why it was so important that he did what she told him.

Until he arrived though all she could do was wait.

Being a monster, was nothing compared to the waiting.

Even as a child she’d never been the patient sort. Headstrong was how her father had described her when he was being kind, damned stubborn when she pushed him too far and he lost his temper. He rarely lost his temper though, and when he was quick to apologize when their tempers cooled. She would accept his apology with one of her own and everything would be fine again.

Until the next notion entered her head and she followed it.

Her father blamed it on growing up without a mother and the influence of a woman to temper her fiery personality. So he’d married and she’d gotten a mother of sorts.

A stepmother actually, and quite the impressive one at that. She needed to be to deal with Isobel, for the first thing that her stepmother had said upon their being properly introduced was, “So this is the little unholy terror who scared the others off?”

Until that point it hadn’t occurred to her that her father had been courting any of those other women, the ones that came to visit and talked to her like she was a fool just because she was a child. It had never entered her head to accept their silly compliments and meaningless praise of how adorable she was. As young as she’d been, she would have much rather be called clever than adorable.

Her new mother, her stepmother, immediately gave her a list of chores, cleaning and cooking and mending her own socks and her father’s as well, tasks deemed fitting for a young girl. She immediately refused and her stepmother was equally prompt in her response. The woman told Isobel to go to the kitchen and fetch a wooden spoon. Curious, Isobel did as told and waited expectantly to find out what the spoon was for.

She took it and stared down at young Isobel’s look of curiosity, only to pass it back to her with a shake of her head, “Your father never beat you so I’m not about to start. Instead I’ll make a deal with you, do all the chores I give you for a week and I’ll show you how I do them.”

“The same as everyone else I’m sure,” was her quick reply, prompting a laugh from her stepmother.

“I am not everyone else,” her stepmother said haughtily, “Clever as you are you’ll learn that in time. Sooner if you’re a good girl and help out.”

She did the chores, not because she was told to, but because her stepmother had called her clever rather than stubborn.

And at the end of the week she made good on her promise.

Isobel watched as her stepmother gathered up the wash and carried it down to the stream, not where the other women did their wash, but around a bend and hidden by reeds.

“I won’t warn you not to try this,” her stepmother said with a proud smile, “Because I know you will. So instead I’ll warn you that no matter how you try, it won’t work for you.”

Having said that she lay the wash down on the bank of the stream and smacked each one once, scolding them with some word that Isobel couldn’t understand, but she could tell by the tone of her voice that it was scolding.

The wash responded, flopping into the water like a collection of strangely shaped fish, and began beating itself against the rocks.

As Isobel watched, the wash did itself.

“I’m a witch,” her stepmother explained, “I know the words to speak to make anything obey. Don’t tell anyone and I’ll show you more about being a witch in return.”

Just as her stepmother had said, Isobel tried to say those words and failed each time. No matter how often she heard them they seemed to slip through her ears like water through her fingers.

She also didn’t tell anyone, at first because the idea of living under the same roof as a witch terrified her, and later because she was genuinely curious.

Her stepmother could tell vegetables to scrub and cut themselves, warn a roast to cook perfectly and even swear at a goose just so to make all its feathers fly off so that it was ready to be cooked.

Eventually, as she grew older, she asked her stepmother about how to become a witch herself, because it seemed like a fine thing to be.

Her stepmother looked her right in the eye, like they were both adults speaking as equals, which made Isobel both excited and afraid.

“I am about to tell you more things that you can’t tell anyone, do you understand?”

She nodded, too excited to speak at the thought that her stepmother was about to teach her magic.

Instead her stepmother closed her eyes and turned away, “I didn’t marry your father because I loved him. That was one of the things I gave up when I became a witch, being able to love a man. Another thing I gave up was being able to have a daughter of my own. It seemed a fine trade when I was younger, but I’m not young anymore. I married your father purely for selfish reasons, because I am by nature selfish, all witches are. I married him because I didn’t want to be alone and because I wanted a daughter.”

As time passed Isobel learned more about witches, not from her stepmother, but from listening to people blame misfortune on them and stories about horrible things happening.

She asked her stepmother about this, demanded answers, and her stepmother answered honestly, that witches were spiteful as well as selfish and that no good person would ever become a witch.

Isobel countered that she was a good person and she wanted to become a witch, much to her stepmother’s amusement.

“There’s a difference between wanting and becoming,” her stepmother explained with a small smile.

Later, after hearing in church, that witches were wicked and in league with the devil, she realized, for the first time, something that should have been obvious to her long ago.

Her stepmother never went to church. There was always some chore she needed to do that couldn’t wait, some urgent task.

When she confronted her stepmother about this, if only to be allowed in on the excuses to avoid hours of listening to droning sermons and sitting in the painfully uncomfortable pews, her stepmother had shrugged, said that she’d never much cared for church, and that she hadn’t made a deal with the Devil.

“A devil, more than one actually,” she’d said, “But never the Devil himself. Just small ones for doing small magic.”

She wasn’t _that_ arrogant had been her explanation.

After that Isobel stopped asking her about becoming a witch, or even to see magic. The idea of a devil, even a small one was frightening.

It was the first time it occurred to her that her stepmother was as dangerous as the witches in the stories she’d heard, because there was no telling what a person who had dealt with devils, even small ones might do. After that she was far more cautious, much to her stepmother’s delight. The short time where Isobel was afraid of her seemed to amuse her greatly, much to Isobel’s frustration.

The idea of someone laughing at her because she was afraid was unbearable, especially when she asked her stepmother what was so funny and got the explanation that, as a witch, she could only feel anger and spite, that love and joy had been taken from her as part of an exchange she’d made. For that reason the fear of others was one of the few things left that she could laugh at. So Isobel forced herself to stop being afraid and to prove it to herself she asked her stepmother why, if she didn’t feel love, she wanted a family and daughter.

“Spite,” had been the woman’s answer, “I was told I couldn’t have either of those things and that only made me want them more.”

It was an unpleasant answer, but she’d made it clear that being a witch was unpleasant in general so Isobel was willing to accept it.

Eventually she got used to the idea of having a truly wicked and possibly evil witch for a stepmother, something that set the stage for her being able to take all manner of unusual happenings in stride. After all, if after the time mice had chewed the hem of her stepmother’s favorite dress, Isobel could watch as every rat and mouse in the house and some from the garden as well, ran from their hiding places and to throw themselves into the oven, there wasn’t much that she couldn’t deal with.

As she grew older it never occurred to her that this was strange way to grow up. To her it was the way things were.

It was that way of thinking that set a most unusual set of occurrences into motion one day when she was walking down the road to town. It was a cold and dreary day, the sky threatening rain, but she’d wanted to go outside and do something. It had already been raining for the past three days and in that time she’d cleaned the house until it was spotless, not because her stepmother had told her to, but because there was nothing else to do.

She wasn’t going shopping or going to sell anything, she was just walking for the sake of it because it was the only thing she could think to do to amuse herself. Her stepmother had encouraged a certain amount of independence in her, and had agreed when she said that she was going for a walk. Said, not asked, because her stepmother didn’t like it when she asked to do things.

“They’re your feet,” her stepmother would say when she asked to go out, “You don’t need my permission to use them as long as you do what you’re told around the house.”

Her stepmother was very fond of telling, but she was otherwise fair.

The road was wet and slippery and she had constantly step around puddles, some so large and deep that she needed to go off the road to avoid them.

Focused as she was on not falling into the mud, she failed to notice the group of young men approaching on horseback until she found herself on a part of the road with large puddles to either side. Either she or the men on horseback where going to have to leave the road and go through them.

She kept going, as did the young men, only stopping when she was barely a meter away.

They looked at her.

She looked at them.

They waited.

She waited.

One of the young men finally spoke up, “One of us is going to have to move.”

“I think all of you are going to need to move,” she said without thinking, “Even single file I won’t be able to get past you without getting wet.”

The one who had spoken looked furious, but the one behind him burst out laughing which seemed to put him badly off balance.

“She has a point,” he said between laughing. Then he looked at her, “You’re quite bold.”

That was the first time Isobel had been called bold and she decided that she rather liked the compliment.

“Thank you,” she smiled up at him, “That’s a very lovely compliment.”

The young man wasn’t handsome, in fact he was the smallest of the group, thin without being frail and, honestly, quite plain looking compared to the others. It was she decided, the way he was dressed, very fine clothing, incredibly well made, it drew attention to the fact that, though he wasn’t ugly, he wasn’t much to look at. His smile was genuine and his laughter was infectious, even if the others were only laughing to be polite.

He shrugged as though to say ‘that’s the way of things’.

“Very bold,” he amended and asked what she was doing.

She answered honestly, that she was walking to town because the rain had stopped and she had nothing better to do. Then she asked him what they were doing, for she noticed that they were all armed. The plain young man with a bow and arrows, the rest similarly equipped, but with swords as well.

The others had stopped laughing at this point and they looked at her as though she was being deliberately dense, or perhaps had said something rude.

He didn’t seem to mind though and answered that they were riding for more or less the same reasons, that the rain had stopped and they had nothing better to do than go and hunt for wolves in the woods.

“Be careful then,” she said and she and the young men went on their respective ways.

She thought nothing of it until several days later, the group of young men showed up at her house. Her father stared at them in stunned silence, unused to visitors, her stepmother watched them with a wry smile and suggested that Isobel invite them in and offer them a drink at the very least. They did look tired and unkempt, clearly having been out in the woods the whole time since she had last seen them. This was strange for a wolf hunt, but not as strange as the fact that they hadn’t brought hounds with them.

She commented on how their hunt might not have taken so long if they’d brought dogs to track the wolves by scent and drive them out of the brush.

The plain one with the bow and arrows smiled and nodded, agreeing that, if their quarry had turned out to be an ordinary wolf dogs would have helped, but the wolf leading the pack turned out to be a werewolf and would have spoken in the language of demons and beasts to turn the hounds against them.

Isobel laughed at what she assumed was a joke, only for her stepmother to scold her.

“There are werewolves and worse in those woods,” she said sternly, “Do not laugh at them.”

She trusted her stepmother to know such things and apologized, explaining that she knew nothing of such creatures.

After that she had to endure an afternoon of the young men all boasting about the monsters they had slain and the ones they planned to seek out. The plain looking one was mostly quiet, occasionally looking at her with an apologetic expression and smiling when she was able to interject with a comment of her own.

When they left her stepmother looked at her with a smile and asked if she knew who their guests had been.

Isobel didn’t, though she commented that they’d been quite unpleasant except for the plain looking one and that he could have stood to have found himself better friends.

“That may be true, but those weren’t his friends,” her stepmother laughed through tears of mirth, “That was Kemp Owen, the king’s own son, and those were his retainers.”

That revelation was quite the shock, but not as much as when, later that month Kemp Owen and his retainers returned, this time on their way to hunt a monstrous boar rather than werewolves. His retainers were silent for the most part, which gave her the opportunity to ask what they were doing there.

The king’s son explained that they had figured that it might be worth stopping to rest before they left on their hunt and that she had been a delightful hostess the last time they visited.

That may have been true, but Isobel hadn’t planned to spend the day cooking and then cleaning up after guests, and told him that plainly. Though she did add, for the sake of politeness, if he wanted to visit again he should give her warning.

His retainers looked outraged at her remark, but she paid them no mind and neither did he, instead complimenting her on how outspoken she was.

It was a compliment too, the way he said it made it clear, which made her feel a little more kindly towards him.

Very few women were so willing to speak their mind, he told her.

“Well, maybe you know very few women then, or the ones that you know are the wrong sort,” had been her response to that.

Just as she’d understood his compliment, he understood her joke.

He didn’t visit on his way back from the hunt this time, and she thought nothing of it, at least not until several months later when a messenger came and informed her that in three days’ time Owen and his retainers would be visiting and that it would be appreciated if she were to prepare a meal for them.

Such messages and visits soon became a regular occurrence and over time Owen’s retainers became slightly more polite, though it was clear that the whole situation left them quite bemused.

Her father seemed to feel the same way, marveling that she had somehow managed to attract the attention of the king’s son, and in the very next breath, worrying over what that would mean for her.

Her stepmother on the other hand, took it all in stride, acting as though there were nothing exceptional about Isobel having befriended the king’s son.

For that reason it was her stepmother that she turned to for advice about the cause of her father’s worry.

The old witch smiled, “It’s because you’ll become an old maid all alone now. Owen cannot marry you because he’s the son of a king and even the youngest, least important of boy in the royal family can’t ask to marry a peasant girl. And it goes without saying that no man would dare ask for your hand when Kemp Owen has his eye on you.”

Thinking that it was one of her stepmother’s hidden bits of advice Isobel figured that she had the solution to it, for she had grown quite fond of Owen. He was a good listener and he didn’t expect her to act a certain way just because it was considered proper and he wouldn’t want her to.

Again and again he told her that he appreciated how honest she was, that he wished more people would be willing to speak their minds around him. She was one of the few people he’d ever met who wasn’t reflexively respectful or too afraid to say what they were thinking. That had been a lot for to think about, that being royalty wasn’t just difficult because of expectations and responsibility, but because people would want to be your friend without trying to actually befriend you.

When he next came to visit, she took him aside and asked him to marry her, figuring that if he couldn’t ask she had to be the one to do it. Her stepmother had taught her to speak her mind after all, and Owen had repeatedly told her that was something he admired greatly about her.

Unfortunately, this was a situation where being forthright wasn’t enough

She found the whole situation terribly unfair, but as her stepmother often reminded her, most things weren’t fair and most people didn’t actually want things to be fair, they wanted things to be unfair in their favor.

Not for the first time she and her stepmother had argued, though it was one of the worst arguments they’d ever had. Isobel told her that as far as she was concerned, there didn’t seem to be much point in being a prince or a witch since neither Owen nor her stepmother seemed to be capable of getting what they wanted.

“I could make a poison to make the prince fall in love with you, madly in love with you and forsake his title, his name, his birthright and spend the rest of his days fawning over you,” her stepmother said flatly, her eyes glinting with malice, “Make him a pitiful creature, loathsome to be around and impossible to escape from because all that will matter to him is you. He won’t be the man you love, but he’ll be yours. Is that what you want? Me to make him your pathetic little pet? I’ve done it before. It was the first magic I ever worked and the simplest.”

“That’s not what I want and you know it,” Isobel had snapped back, “Only a fool would want that.”

“And I was a fool when I was your age,” her stepmother agreed, “Young people usually are.”

Isobel had walked into that, not that she was going to admit it. Instead she continued to press for an answer, “I’m not you though. Tell me what magic you can work and I’ll come up with a way.”

“There are plenty of ways, but you won’t like any of them,” her stepmother waved a finger in her face, “I can give you a way easy enough, but it won’t guarantee that you get what you want. With magic nothing is ever guaranteed except misfortune. Everything has a price and you often won’t know what it truly is until you’ve agreed to pay it. I’ve warned you of that well enough.”

That was when Isobel’s temper got the better of her and she slapped her stepmother’s hand away.

The witch, who had never before raised a hand to her save for that one time when they first met, grabbed Isobel by the hair and threw her with impossible strength.

Instead of hitting the wall Isobel flew out the window and through the air, faster and faster until the countryside was a green blur below her. Too late she realized the danger of arguing with a witch. She had grown up with the woman and become accustomed to her strange ways, forgetting the warnings her stepmother had given her. If she’d been an ordinary woman perhaps she might have simply hit Isobel back, or stormed off in a rage and not spoken to her for a time. Instead, as the air grew cold and carried on it the smell of salt, Isobel realized that her stepmother had thrown her all the way to the ocean, to be dashed on the rocks along the shore no doubt.

Except she didn’t fall when she reached the ocean, where fearsome waves crashed against the rocky shore. Her flight continued out over the blue-gray waves, farther and farther from shore until it vanished from sight.

In the distance she spied a small dark speck, a little island, rocky with only a single tree growing on it.

As the island grew nearer she began to drop and thought she understood the witch’s intent, to leave her stranded on the island, to live out the rest of her days all alone.

Sure enough once over the island she dropped like a stone, down into the tree. Brittle branches snapped from the impact, tearing her clothing and snagging in her hair.

Thrashing and struggling she worked to free herself and get to the ground.

Except the moment she did she fell forward, her body stretching out into a long, sinuous thing. She watched as her nails curved into fearsome claws and her skin hardened into shimmering scales, leaving her a monster.

Of course, it was something she should have expected. There had been a chance that a boat may have eventually passed by and she might have caught the attention of a keen eyed sailor and been rescued.

As a monster there would be no such hope.

She spent the rest of the day exploring the island, finding nothing on it other than the tree, a small cave and fragments of weathered wood caught amid the rocks on the shore.

To give herself something to do she gathered up those bits of wood and brought them above the tideline to dry so that she might later be able to start a fire for warmth if she could figure out how to light it.

That was a problem that would quickly solve itself, for just as the sun was setting a small bird flew overhead and landed in the tree. It watched her for several minutes before hopping down and looking at the pile of wood she had gathered, perhaps in search of twigs to build a nest.

“Good,” it spoke in her stepmother’s voice, “At least you’re doing something rather than sitting around and moping.”

Growling, Isobel turned and, intending to demand what her stepmother was doing, breathed a burst of flames so hot that they cracked the rocks behind the tree. That was something she hadn’t known that she could manage until that moment.

At least she had a fire to keep her warm that night and a way to cook any fish she caught if she was able to figure out how to do so.

The next morning she went down to the tide pools, hoping that she might find fish caught in the shallows.

Dozens of shimmering fish jumped out of the water as a much larger fish swam up to the shore, sticking its scaled head out of the water to fix her with a glassy stare.

It was her stepmother again, she was sure of it.

“What do you want?” She hissed, managing to control the fire of her breath this time.

“To let you know that I’ve given you a way to get what you want,” her stepmother’s voice came from the fish’s mouth with perfect clarity, “Kemp Owen is quite the slayer of monsters after all and eventually word of you will reach him. If you can get him to kiss you three times the curse will be broken. It won’t be as simple as telling him who you are though. Magic has to have rules after all and if you try to tell him what happened before the curse is broken you’ll have broken those rules and be stuck as you are. So you’ll either kill each other or end up together, just as you wanted. After all, no one would hold it against a prince to take a fair maiden as a reward for defeating a horrific serpent.”

The fish flicked its tail and started to swim away and Isobel rushed into the water after it, hoping to catch it and try to get further details about her curse.

The fish was too fast for her and too small, darting into a gap between two boulders and vanishing from sight. It wasn’t a complete waste though, chasing it she discovered what a powerful swimmer she was, and that she could breathe underwater. She also discovered the wrecked ships beneath the waves, but she didn’t stop to explore them at the time.

Instead she surfaced and went back to shore to think over what she had learned.

There really wasn’t that much more that she needed to know about the curse. The bit her stepmother had told her had been enough. The curse had clear straightforward enough rules and she would go along with them. The hardest part would be keeping Owen from attacking her on sight, but she supposed that fleeing underwater was always an option.

In a way, she supposed, her stepmother had tried to do the right thing despite her nature as a witch, so there was that. Of course there was one thing that her stepmother had been very wrong about. She wouldn’t be Owen’s reward.

The two of them would be a reward for each other when this was all over and done with.


End file.
